


Against the dark

by sirillable



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 12:01:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4745606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirillable/pseuds/sirillable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight teenagers went to the Blackwood Pines for the annual winter getaway, only seven made it out alive. This is the story of the consequences.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>This story is going to be centered around Mike, Sam and Chris. I wanted to play with the idea that - while other survivors would rather forget that horror night in Blackwood Pines - these three would still look back, not being able to find peace (for different reasons that I'm planning on exploring). And then they would start to wonder - <b> what else is out there? </b> If wendigos are real, what other mythical/supernatural beings might also exist? How to fight them? </p>
<p>(I mean, these are the questions I'd eventually ask myself were I at their place).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against the dark

These days Mike dreams of fire. Sometimes in these dreams he is a mere observer and simply watches the flames licking the wooden walls of Josh’s cabin, simply listens to their crackling, and he feels free. At other times, he is the one who burns. When that’s the case, he’s never himself in the dream, just watches from aside as his body gets eaten by the unyielding blaze, detached, there-and-not-there at the same time.

When he wakes, he feels drained. Numb. He doesn’t fear the fire, not really. Fire was what saved them, in the end, even though Mike is very well aware that it also could have been their end.

It’s difficult, to get back to normal, to rebuild his life anew, but Mike tries. Most of the time, he even manages. There are even days when he almost forgets what happened at the mountain or when he doesn’t believe it was real. Well, not really, but when he sits on the porch basking in the spring’s sun, with the sweet smell of his mother’s gardenias in the air, the horrible reminiscence of that night fades away, as if it didn’t happen to Mike in this life. In the previous life, perhaps.

But the thing is, Mike wants to remember that night. He is probably the only one from their group who does. To Mike, it is crucial to remember. He survived, after all, and despite all the atrocities he witnessed along the way, it made him stronger, like the steel hardened in fire. He also learnt the truths about himself, and they are important. He went to Josh’s winter getaway as a reckless boy, light-hearted and oblivious. He came back a different man.

As for their group, they mostly went their own ways. It was always Josh who tied them all together, and Josh was gone. His loss was... painful, even after all the shit the boy put them through.

They still meet sometimes but never all together. They text or call each other at times but it’s not the same it used to be and Mike knows, it’ll never be the same. Somehow that night on the mountain manages to both divide them and connect them. They share the terrific experience, and there are no other people but them they can talk to and be understood. It is not the matter of belief – after all, Mike knows, his parents believe him. They found the truth difficult to absorb at first, but they believed him. The lack of his fingers – though Mike himself never addressed the issue, he didn’t want to, it wasn’t important – and the fact that he’s never lied to them before were enough for them to believe. However, despite their acceptance, they will never truly understand how it is, to stand eye to eye with such a vicious predator as the wendigo. They’ll never understand the frantic need for the dawn to finally come. They’ll never dream of the fire the way Mike does.

His parents are too soothing to him now for Mike’s liking. They try to act as if everything was normal, and yet they lower their voices when he’s in the same room, as if afraid they might scare him. They constantly insist that he rest, when all that he really needs is to be active, to do something in order to escape this omnipresent numbness he feels. His mother takes care to prepare his favourite food more often than not, bakes for him, does everything to make him feel better. She even asked, in a concerned, diffident voice, if he needed to see a therapist.

(He didn’t, obviously, so he made it clear, firmly if a little too aggressively . His mother never addressed the issue again though Mike can’t help but notice her worried glances every now and then.)

He escapes the warm inside of his home whenever he can. He is always careful though to always tell his parents when he’s going out and to always have a charged phone in case they wished to contact him. No need to worry them more.

Sometimes he simply walks, all by himself, with no real destination in mind. Sometimes he visits Jessica.

Jess needs him and in the way he needs her too. It’s a miracle that she survived when for the bigger portion of that night he was sure she didn’t, and he needs to visit her regularly to make sure that she is safe.

Jessica is shattered by the events she witnessed, and no one could blame her – after all, she went through hell, being mauled and maimed by the beast, unable to escape its claws and teeth and then trapped in the tunnels, in pain, barely managing to walk. If it weren’t for Matt, she could have died there easily, all by herself. Even though Jess is grateful to Mike for going after her when she was first taken, the truth is, Mike gave up on her in the end, never believing she could be alive after the fall, blinded by despair and the raw desire for revenge. Even now, when he thinks of it he can taste the sour taste of guilt on his tongue.

Jess cries a lot these days. She says she doesn’t remember the night clearly, so she can’t really describe what happened to her. She says she remembers Mike’s voice when he came to safe her and she remembers the darkness that embraced her in the mines and the fear that came with that. The other things remain blurry at best. Sometimes in the dreams they seem clearer but she can never be sure whether they were real or are a mere products of her mind. She frequently suffers from panic attacks, and whenever Mike is with her when that happens, he always feels so helpless. He embraces her, talks to her through it, strokes her hair and almost wishes they could go back to that wooden cabin when she was taken by wendigo, so he could go after her again and rescue her, for good this time. He hates that he can’t help her with what she’s going through. He hates being useless.

Naturally, Jess is assigned special help. Her parents did everything they could to secure their only daughter’s wellbeing by finding a reputable therapist. She is homeschooled now, separated from curious eyes of other students many of whom used to be her friends. Mike knows that for a girl such as Jessica, who was always in the spotlight and liked it, the change is both a burden and a blessing. She must feel lonely but she craves the alienation nonetheless, she wouldn’t bear having to expose herself in front of other people in her current shape and stand up against their oppressiveness. Jess is ashamed of the scars the wendigo carved into her skin. But it’s not only her beauty the beast has taken away from her, but also her courage and her confidence. She will never be the prom queen she always wanted to be and Mike will never be her king.

At school, Mike sometimes hears the gossip. Nobody knows what really happened at Josh’s cabin during the winterbreak but they all sense the tragedy. There is nothing that turns people into vultures more than a tragedy. Mike himself doesn’t avoid their stares, he looks them back in the eyes defiantly, silently challenging them to speak up. They always leave him alone. It’s different when he hears them passing rude comments about Jessica. Truth is, he doesn’t really care what they say about him behind his back – as long as they don’t harass him – but he won’t have them backbiting Jess. When one of the blokes from his football team insults Jessica openly, Mike instantly lashes out at him. He sees red, so he throws punch after punch, swearing, finally taking a damn action. It takes three teammates – Matt amongst them – to pull him away. He gets a suspension for that, but it’s worth it, he tells himself, it’s worth it. His knuckles hurt, but it’s good, it makes the overbearing numbness go away.

As the weeks progress and that horrific night in Blackwood Pines is getting more and more distant, Mike still can’t find peace. He thinks he must be broken in a way – there’s a blank space inside him that apparently can’t be filled. He must learn to live with it. He must accept the numbness and the recurring dreams of fire.

 

It is only when he half-heartedly – and purely out of duty – sorts through miscellaneous college brochures when he gets it: his normal life – that is, the life he lived before that night – is over. It’s time he let it go because the truth was: the Mike Munroe who wanted to get a degree, find a well-paid job, marry happily, have a family, the Mike who was carefree, confident and so damn oblivious was gone. He is another person now, itchy, bursting with this raw _need_ to do something right. He is a survivor, he actively fought with monsters whose existence was – still kind of is – beyond his perception and maybe, just _maybe_ , it meant something.

He vaguely thinks of the nameless flamethrower man who came to their cabin and told them about wendigos thereby saving them. That man had sacrificed his life to fight these creatures and that was something admirable, that was something worth doing. Mike never thought of himself as the hero, but this simple thought makes his heart bit faster as the numbness fades. _It’s just a thought_ , he tells himself before he goes to sleep.

This night he again dreams of fire. But it’s neither of the recurring dreams; this time he is firing a flamethrower against the darkness. His grip is firm and he feels heat. He is finally at ease.

When he wakes up very early at the morning, he lies for a long time staring at the ceiling, observing the rays of sunshine slowly wandering on the walls, gathering thoughts. Then he stands up, he gathers the pamphlets he somehow managed to scatter around his room the night before and puts them into the lowest drawer of his desk, and locks it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
